NEW HAVEN >> The leaders of the House and Senate have competing visions for how to fix payments in lieu of taxes to ease the tax burden on communities with large amounts of tax-exempt property.

State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney and Hartford state Sen. John Fontara have proposed changes that would combine the state’s PILOT for colleges and hospitals with the reimbursement for taxes lost from state facilities in a town, eliminating the different reimbursement rates.

Looney said he also favors giving a higher percentage of the total to towns with the greatest need, but he said no town would get less than it receives this year.

A public hearing on Looney’s bill will be held today at 10:30 a.m. in Room 2E before Finance, Revenue and Bonding.

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House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, has proposed a reverse PILOT, which would eliminate the tax exemptions for colleges and hospitals. They would be on the hook for the full tax bill, but could apply to the state to be reimbursed for a portion of it.

Both concepts would be phased in over a number of years.

Sharkey sees his plan as the beginning of major tax reform to be taken up next year.

Part of his suggestions for the future include the state taking over the cost of special education and doing something about the car tax, where vehicles with the same worth are taxed at different rates depending upon a town’s tax mill rate.

Looney said he would rank the towns based on how much tax-exempt property is within their borders.

The 20 municipalities with the greatest amount of such property would be guaranteed a grant from the state equal to 50 percent of the taxes they would have received. The next 20 towns would get a grant equal to 45 percent, while the remaining towns would get a payment equal to 40 percent of the lost taxes.

This formula would be phased in over five years beginning in fiscal 2016 with full payments in place by fiscal 2020.

In addition to ranking the towns in groups according to need, Looney said the reimbursement rates would be guaranteed.

They now fluctuate depending on how much is allocated yearly to those line items by lawmakers. Also, as the nonprofits expand their land purchases, the allocations are further diluted among the towns.

“It’s never been a mandate. It’s only been an authorization,” Looney said of the current formula.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has proposed increasing the PILOTs by some $8 million, of which New Haven next year would get an additional $2.3 million. Looney said lawmakers are inclined to increase the governor’s proposal.

Under the current PILOT statutes, the state can reimburse municipalities for up to 77 percent of the taxes they would have received from colleges and hospitals, and up to 45 percent for state properties.

In reality, it has rarely gotten close to those benchmarks, but over the last decade it has declined percipitously. It is now down to 32 cents on a dollar for the colleges and hospitals and 23 cents for state property.

For the municipalities that depend on PILOT, the dropping reimbursements and the uncertainty of funding have always been an issue, but the complaints have become louder this year.

New Haven’s Board of Alders, faced with another tax increase, passed a resolution seeking full reimbursement. Alder Michael Stratton, D-19th, even hired his own lobbyist to seek more favorable changes for the city.

New Haven Mayor Toni Harp has said previously that she worries that a reverse PILOT could be tied up in court for years. Yale University is already exempt as part of the Connecicut Constitution.

Generally speaking, however, she felt more comfortable applying it to hospitals,

“I really think it is an important one when we look at hospitals. Even if we just did hospitals across the state, I think that would be very helpful to the towns,” Harp said.

“The reality is, that they are not-for-profit in the traditional sense of the word,” Harp said, a statement Sharkey agrees with.

“I get e-mails every day from people who are very upset that we are at the level of mill rate we are at. ... (so) if all of the not-for-profit colleges and hospitals paid what a resident owner has to pay, then everybody would pay less,” she said.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said he hasn’t been involved with the PILOT changes initiative.

He said he is aware of some of the talks, but right now he is just watching it unfold.

“I’ll reserve the right to get involved at some point. I’ve got a lot of thing on my agenda now already,” Malloy said.

On the reverse PILOT proposal by the House speaker, Quinnipiac University, which has property in Hamden and North Haven, has been strongly critical, while the University of New Haven in West Haven has raised similar objections.

George Synodi, vice president for finance and administration at UNH, said his institution produces graduates with “minimal direct state financial support.”

“It’s a model that works based on the most basic premise of supply and demand. Private institutions need to provide quality service at a competitive cost to remain in business,” he wrote. Synodi said the reverse PILOT would not only put private colleges at a “further competitive disadvantage,” but also hurt the benefits they provide to towns.

Synodi said UNH not only pays tax revenues and voluntary payments, but also is helping to revitalize the neighborhoods adjacent to the campus, while its students are the base to attract private development.

He said UNH, having grown from 1,800 to more than 4,600 full-time undergraduates in a decade, is a “great turnaround story” and it is “the primary economic engine in West Haven.” Synodi said the bill is bad business for its students, West Haven and the state.

Albertus Magnus College in New Haven did not immediately have someone in a position to comment on the reverse PILOT, while Yale-New Haven Hospital did object.

“Yale-New Haven Hospital is not in favor of the bill. We understand, though, that the governor has put additional money in his budget to increase pilot payments to cities and towns, and we do support that,” said Dana Marnane, spokeswoman for the Yale New Haven Health System.